They said "if you like Dawn of the Dead, you will love this". They were wrong.

Rating: 3/10 (28 June 2003)

I had heard all the hype and read the reviews. Everyone said this was a good movie...a "Dawn of the Dead" type movie. This movie doesn't even come close. First of all, it is not a zombie movie at all. The people seem to have rabies and are called the infected. Sure they may attack humans, but that does not make them the undead. The undead are usually a lot tougher to kill. This one starts out promising enough with a guy waking up in a hospital naked (could have done without the full nudity) and everything in the city is deserted. The movie makers did a great job of making the city look empty. The guy goes into a church and encounters one of the rabid infected people and makes a run for it. He runs into two survivors and there are some good scenes here including the only gory death in the movie when a gal has to kill her friend. Then the movie becomes very dull and the infected are seen almost not at all. I think the "Hulk" had more screen time than the so-called zombies in this movie. The two remaining members end up finding more survivors. A father and his daughter and this dude with a bat who for some reason is only shown once and never seen again. The group has this peppy conversation on how they need each other and decide to go on a road trip to a place they heard about on the radio. I was waiting for them to start singing "There's got to be a morning after". They embark on their road trip and it is a three-day trip. During the trip they have a rather good stop in the tunnel, one of the last good scenes in the movie where they encounter the infected. The rest of their road trip is nice and bland...they stay out in the open and no "zombies" bother them. The "zombies" apparently are drawn only to candles and not to bonfires. The heroes get to the army base and of course the army has ulterior motives that have nothing to do with the "zombies" and the rest of the movie just sucks. I am still waiting for the violent, gory finale I was promised by a reviewer. I really have to wonder if those who compared this to "Dawn of the Dead' have actually seen Dawn? Sure Romero used a story too, but he had lots more action and gore and horror. He never forgot that the main reason we went to his movies was to see zombies.